A new Boko Haram massacre has killed hundreds in Nigeria’s northeast, a senator said Wednesday, as police offered $300,000 for information leading to the rescue of more than 200 schoolgirls held hostage by the Islamists.

The horrific story of the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls from their school in Borno Province, northeastern Nigeria, by the Boko Haram terrorist group has again underlined the problem of violent fundamentalism in Africa.

Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party.

Mike Lofgren retired this summer after 28 years as a congressional staffer, 16 of which he spent on the Republican side working with the House and Senate budget committees, and he wants to tell you something about the nature of the current Republican Party. (more)

It now seems a necessary qualification for the Republican nomination, at least at the present primaries stage, to be a born-again fundamentalist Protestant. Yet in the United States the majority of the electorate is not fundamentalist, evangelical or Protestant.

For the crime of receiving two unrelated men in her home, a 75-year-old Saudi woman has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months behind bars. Once again, a nation that is both one of America’s closest allies and brutally oppressive of women finds itself in an awkward light.

Just how dangerous are evangelical zealots? A new book by Jeff Sharlet takes a close and disturbing look at the group known as The Family and its disturbing and apparently widespread influence on mainstream political culture.

The House of Saud clearly takes a top-down approach to ruling. Under mounting pressure from the West to confront religious fundamentalism, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs plans to retrain some 40,000 imams.

Conservative Christian blowhard Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president, possibly giving the candidate a boost with fundamentalist voters. Robertson came to the decision because, as only he could possibly put it: “The overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists.”

There’s a lot of talk about religious fundamentalism these days, but how much do we really know about the brand of Christian fundamentalism that has developed in America since, and in response to, the Enlightenment? Author James Carroll holds forth on the subject in this interview with TomDispatch editor Tom Engelhardt.

Afghan forces retook a district in Kandahar province that had been captured by the Taliban. The Afghan forces said they had made a tactical decision to withdraw, but the Taliban said it captured the district outright after days of battle. Either way, the former ruling fundamentalists of Afghanistan appear less than beaten.

The story goes like this: One day Jesus will come and take his favorite Christians to heaven, leaving the rest to fend off the Antichrist. It’s called the rapture, and 20 percent of Christians in America believe it is imminent. That’s far too many for a group of moderate Christians and theologians who want to reclaim Sunday school.

For years Iraqi women enjoyed access to education and professional careers. After the U.S. invasion, President Bush promised to expand those freedoms, but the prevalence of sectarian violence and religious fundamentalism has stripped Iraq’s women of many of the rights they had been accustomed to.

Truthdig turned one year old last Wednesday, and we couldn’t have done it without you. So thanks! In honor of the occasion, we’re taking a look back on 12 of the most popular stories of the last 12 months.

In the search for a sense of dignity, basic services and honesty, Arabs from all walks of life are turning to fundamentalist groups that have succeeded where their own governments have failed. ?I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,? said one educated middle-class Egyptian woman.

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post on the fundamentalism that makes it impossible for Bush to ever change course: “Faith is to the new conservatism ... what ideology was to the old leftism: an unquestioned orthodoxy from which all policy flows.”

The media has grossly underreported the extent to which Bush’s Christian fundamentalism informs his policies on Israel, Iraq, stem cells and abortion, argues a former Newsday and Knight Ridder White House correspondent.

The founder of Domino’s Pizza is planning on spending $250 million to create a Florida town with no abortions, no porn and no birth control.
Civil libertarians are threatening to sue, and liberal Catholics are likening the idea to Islamic fundamentalism.Couldn’t the guy put his money where it’s really needed, like toward schools in Darfur? Or a pizza crust that doesn’t resemble a sponge full of grease? (Hat tip: Huff Post)

Fanatics are those people of any faith, color, persuasion or political belief who maintain that the end, whatever end, justifies all the means, including the bloody means. By this criterion I am afraid Hamas is a fanatic organization par excellence.